I have just watched the first of the collection of five short films known as The Uncanny Valley to celebrate CA's 5th anniversary. While it's a solid start, it is disappointing, due to its over-familiar plot, lack of good humor and lack of subtlety.
The plot of this short is that a gamer obsessed with the new game Sky- guard, and is therefore putting the game over everything else in his life, including his work, his wife and his wife. One night while playing the game, the character he has created comes to life and started to take over it, as he is popular at work and treats his friends and girlfriend better than the gamer ever could. The plot here is nothing new, as it is the classic fictional character comes to the real world and tries to live life in it. What is most disappointing is that this plot isn't taken in any sort of new direction, making it feel far too predictable.
To make matters worse, the characters here are too cliché to get interested in. There's the character who is more interested in media than anything else, the asshole boss, the girlfriend who has had enough of her boyfriend's lack of care, the best friend character and the fictional character who applies his lifestyle to the real world.
The plot symbolizes how much video game players spend so much time building up their characters in the game that they would be better living the player's actual lives due to how they give the characters more of a life than the gamer has, due to how much the gamer makes the character like themselves, however none of this is subtle and feels like a slap in the face about how you shouldn't play too much video games.
This would all be fine if the short is funny, but outside of a few chuckles and a spoof of how Skyrim players on the Play station 3 suffer a lot of bugs, the short is lacking in humor as the humor is too obvious.
There are some things I do like though. The acting is good, the camera-work is good and some of the jokes work. This doesn't cover up the fact that the short is very disappointing and not a great way to start Ca's 5th anniversary.
